Pioneers of Computing

Social and Professional Issues in IT Pioneers of Computing Pioneers of Computing Many scientist and engineers have contributed in the development of computing science. This chapter covers all the major scientists and their works, who have played a significant role in the development of computing. Some of the major Pioneers of Computing and their contributions are described here Aristotle (384 BC, Stagira, Greece, 322 BC, Athens, Greece) He was one of the greatest ancient Greek philosophers of his time. Many of his thoughts have become the back bone of computing and artificial Intelligence. His work in the natural and social sciences greatly influenced virtually every area of modern thinking. Biography Aristotle was born in 384 BC in Stagira, on the northwest coast of the Aegean Sea. His father was a friend and the physician of the king of Macedonia, and the lad spent most of his boyhood at the court. At 17, he went to Athens to study. He enrolled at the famous Academy directed by the philosopher Plato. Aristotle threw himself wholeheartedly into Plato's pursuit of truth and goodness. Plato was soon calling him the "mind of the school." Aristotle stayed at the Academy for 20 years, leaving only when his beloved master died in 347 BC. In later years he renounced some of Plato's theories and went far beyond him in breadth of knowledge. Aristotle became a teacher in a school on the coast of Asia Minor. He spent two years studying marine biology on Lesbos. In 342 BC, Philip II invited Aristotle to return to the Macedonian court and teach his 13-year-old son Alexander. This was the boy who was to become conqueror of the world ( see Alexander the Great ). No one knows how much influence the philosopher had on the headstrong youth. After Alexander became king, at 20, he gave his teacher a large sum of money to set up a school in Athens. The Peripatetic School In Athens Aristotle taught brilliantly at his school in the Lyceum. He collected the first great library and established a museum. In the mornings he strolled in the Lyceum gardens, discussing problems with his advanced students. Because, he walked about while teaching, Athenians called his school the Peripatetic (which means "to walk about") school. He led his pupils in research in every existing field of knowledge. They dissected animals and studied the habits of insects. The science of observation was new to the Greeks. Hampered by lack of instruments, they were not always correct in their conclusions. One of Aristotle's most important contributions was defining and classifying the various branches of knowledge. He sorted them into physics, metaphysics, psychology, rhetoric, poetics, and logic, and thus laid the foundation of most of the sciences of today. Aristotle's Works After his death, Aristotle's writings were scattered or lost. In the early Middle Ages the only works of his known in Western Europe were parts of his writings on logic. They became the basis of one of the three subjects of the medieval trivium--logic, grammar, and rhetoric. Early in the 13th century Compiled Deepanjal Shrestha 1 of 33 Social and Professional Issues in IT Pioneers of Computing other books reached the West. Some came from Constantinople; others were brought by the Arabs to Spain. Medieval scholars translated them into Latin. Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (800 - 847, Baghdad, Iraq) Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was born sometime before 800 A.D. in an area not far from Baghdad and lived at least until 847. He wrote his Al-jabr wa'l muqabala (from which our modern word "algebra" comes) while working as a scholar at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. In addition to this treatise, al- Khwarizmi wrote works on astronomy, on the Jewish calendar, and on the Hindu numeration system. The English word "algorithm" derives from the Latin form of al-Khwarizmi's name. Henry Briggs (Feb 1561 Worley Wood, Yorkshire) Briggs is especially known for his publication of tables of logarithms to the base 10, first Logarithmorum chilias prima, 1617, and later Arithmetica logarithmetica, 1624. He also composed a work on trigonometry (basically tables, both of the functions and of the logs of sines and tangents) that was left unfinished at his death; Gellibrand completed and published it. And he left quite a few mathematical manuscripts that remained unpublished. Charles Babbage (Dec 26, 1791 Teignmouth, Devonshire, UK, Oct 18, 1871, London, UK) Charles Babbage “Father of computer” was a great scientist who lived in the 18th century. He was the designer of Difference Engine and the Analytical engine. Biography Charles Babbage was born in London on December 26, 1792 (3), the son of Benjamin Babbage, a London banker. As a youth Babbage was his own instructor in algebra, of which he was passionately fond, and was well-read in the continental mathematics of his day. Upon entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1811, he found himself far in advance of his tutors in mathematics. With Herschel, Peacock, and others, Babbage founded the Analytical Society for promoting continental mathematics and, reforming the mathematics of Newton, then taught at the university. In his twenties Babbage worked as a mathematician, principally in the calculus of functions. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1816, and played a prominent part in the foundation of the Astronomical Society (later Royal Astronomical Society) in 1820. It was about this time that Babbage first acquired the interest in calculating machinery that became his consuming passion for the remainder of his life. Throughout his life Babbage worked in many intellectual fields typical of his day, and made contributions that would have assured his fame irrespective of the Difference and Analytical Engines. Prominent among his published works are: · A Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives (1826); an actuarial paper, Compiled Deepanjal Shrestha 2 of 33 Social and Professional Issues in IT Pioneers of Computing · Table of Logarithms of the Natural Numbers from 1 to 108, 000 (1827), · Reflections on the Decline of Science in England (1830), · On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1832), · Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (1837), · and the autobiographical Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864). Babbage occupied the Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge from 1828 to 1839. He played an important role in the establishment of the Association for the Advancement of Science and the Statistical Society (later Royal Statistical Society). Despite his many achievements, the failure to construct his calculating machines, and in particular the failure of the government to support his work, left Babbage in his declining years a disappointed and embittered man. He died at his home in Dorset Street, London, on October 18, 1871. Honors and Awards · Elected Fellow of the Royal Society - 1816 · First gold medal of the Astronomical Society of London George Boole (Nov 2, 1815 - Dec 8, 1864, Lincoln, England) George Boole laid the groundwork for what we know today as Information Theory through the publication of his masterpiece, An Investigation of the laws of Thought, on which are founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities. In this work, published when the author was 39, Boole reduced logic to an extremely simple type of algebra, in which 'reasoning' is carried out through manipulating formulas simpler than those used in second-year traditional algebra. His theory of logic, which recognizes three basic operations - AND, OR and NOT - was to become germane to the development of telephone circuit switching and the design of electronic computers. Ada Byron (Born: London, England, Dec 10, 1815, Died: London, England, Nov 27, 1852) Ada Byron was the daughter of a brief marriage between the Romantic poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabelle Milbanke, who separated from Byron just a month after Ada was born. Four months later, Byron left England forever. Ada never met her father (who died in Greece in 1823) and was raised by her mother, Lady Byron. Her life was an apotheosis of struggle between emotion and reason, subjectivism and objectivism, poetics and mathematics, ill health and bursts of energy. Lady Byron wished her daughter to be unlike her poetical father, and she saw to it that Ada received tutoring in mathematics and music, as disciplines to counter dangerous poetic tendencies. But Ada's complex inheritance became apparent as early as 1828, when she produced the design for a flying Analyst, Metaphysician, machine. It was mathematics that gave her life its wings. and Founder of Scientific Computing Lady Byron and Ada moved in an elite London society, one in which gentlemen not members of the clergy or occupied with politics or the affairs of a regiment were quite likely to spend their time and fortunes pursuing botany, geology, or astronomy. In the early nineteenth century there were no "professional" scientists (indeed, the word "scientist" was only coined by William Whewell in 1836)--but the participation of noblewomen in intellectual pursuits was not widely encouraged. Compiled Deepanjal Shrestha 3 of 33 Social and Professional Issues in IT Pioneers of Computing One of the gentlemanly scientists of the era was to become Ada's lifelong friend. Charles Babbage, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, was known as the inventor of the Difference Engine, an elaborate calculating machine that operated by the method of finite differences. Ada met Babbage in 1833, when she was just 17, and they began a voluminous correspondence on the topics of mathematics, logic, and ultimately all subjects. In 1835, Ada married William King, ten years her senior, and when King inherited a noble title in 1838, they became the Earl and Countess of Lovelace.

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